Page:A-Hunting of Deer-1906.djvu/51

 camp, and sketched in a sort of comedy the sympathetic and disparaging observations they would make on my adventure; I repeated something like a thousand times, without contradiction, &ldquo;What a fool you were to leave the river!&rdquo; I stopped twenty times, thinking I heard its loud roar, always deceived by the wind in the tree tops; I began to entertain serious doubts about the compass,&mdash;when suddenly I became aware that I was no longer on level ground; I was descending a slope; I was actually in a ravine. In a moment more I was in a brook newly formed by the rain. &ldquo;Thank Heaven!&rdquo; I cried: &ldquo;this I shall follow whatever conscience or the compass says.&rdquo; In this region, all streams go, sooner or later, into the valley. This ravine, this stream, no doubt, led to the river. I splashed and tumbled along down it in mud and water. Down hill we went together, the fall showing that I must have wandered to high ground. When I guessed that I must be close to the river, I suddenly stepped into mud up to my ankles. It was the road,&mdash;running, of course, the wrong way, but still the blessed road. It was a mere canal of liquid mud; but man had made it, and it would take me home. I was at least three miles from the point where I supposed I was near at sunset, and I had before me a toilsome walk of six or seven miles, most of the way in a ditch; but it is truth to say I enjoyed every step of it. I was safe; I knew where I was; and I could have walked till morning. The mind had again got the upper hand of the body, and began to plume itself on its superiority: it was even disposed to doubt whether it had been &ldquo;lost&rdquo; at all.